I’m fascinated by how it’s possible to be nostalgic for something that happened in your lifetime but that you didn’t actually experience firsthand when it happened. Case in point, for me: early-1990s alternative rock and pop. I love great guitar pop from this era, even though I was too young for it at the time. I was 12 in 1994, and as I’ve said, I was a musically sheltered kid who didn’t know what was happening even in mainstream modern rock, let alone the alternative or power-pop worlds I’d come to love so much when I got older.

There’s something about that sound that’s endlessly captivating for me. Part of it’s the fact that kids my age and not much older were into bands I’m only now enjoying, but it’s really a kind of wistfulness that this sound, this energy, was popular right before I was really culturally aware of musical trends outside my parentally prescribed window of country and oldies. Listening to certain records now is like hearing someone describe a party at which I arrived moments too late to do anything but help clean up.

That’s how I feel about Freedy Johnston’s “Bad Reputation.” The singer-songwriter’s fourth album, This Perfect World, hit shelves in the summer of 1994, when I was very much a confused boy who would not at all be able to appreciate Johnston’s witty lyricism or his soulful but poppy angst. It was just a little beyond me at the time, and besides, it wasn’t even on my cultural radar.

I heard the song for the first time on a mix tape some friends made me as a parting gift when I moved to Los Angeles after college. It’s an actual tape, too, and one I wore out through repeated use to the point that the tape itself began to stretch and warp, the songs losing or gaining speed at random. It’s right now locked in the small fireproof safe I use to store things like my wedding certificate and Social Security card. It’s that important to me. The tape was a wonderful mix of pop and hip-hop, rock and soul, and its makers spliced in sound cues that tied into the overarching themes of travel and challenge and that also made the final product feel that much more special. It’s practically impossible to duplicate. Some songs have movie dialogue between them; others cut out halfway through as the next track kicks in abruptly. It’s a work of art.

One of the anchors of the tape is Johnston’s “Bad Reputation,” and the song’s feeling of finding yourself alone in a crowd, looking for someone you can’t forget, cut raggedly to my core as I drove across the country to a new home away from the people I’d spent four years weaving into my life. Everyone goes through the same basic crises right after college, and those years of rockily searching for your identity aren’t that interesting to anyone who wasn’t in them with you, but still, knowing that everyone else was having a tough time didn’t make mine any easier. The first year after college was a tough one for me — my job had low pay and even lower morale, and I went through three apartments and eight roommates in 12 months — and I found myself turning again and again to the songs my friends had put to tape and sent westward with me.

Sometime in those early post-graduate years, I came across Kicking and Screaming. I’d only heard snatches about Noah Baumbach’s first film, and those only in the context of articles that talked about his hiatus in the entertainment industry between writing and directing 1997′s Mr. Jealousy and returning to the field to co-write 2004′s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou with Wes Anderson. I was so glad to find the film, too. It’s a hilarious, sharply written, wonderfully observed comedy about the existential malaise that sets in in your early 20s as you stumble from the cocoon of academia into the unforgiving sunlight of the real world. The jokes worked, the characters were spot-on, and the stories of selfish heartbreak made perfect sense to a young man trying to figure out just what he was going to do with his life.

The film ends on a perfect note of reckless optimism with a young man reaching out to the woman in his life, and as it cuts to black, Baumbach cues up “Bad Reputation.” It was a pretty timely choice from a technical perspective — the film came out in October 1995, just a year after Johnston’s album — but for me it the resonance doubled and trebled, becoming not just a coda for the film but a reference to the very song that had carried me to California on the words and prayers of friends greater and truer than I could ever have imagined having. I didn’t know the song would be there, nor that the film would speak so clearly to what I was living through at the time. But it was, and it did.

The tape my friends made me came with a note and a track listing, scrawled in a messy hand, and the note talks in part about how my friends want me to know that they will always be with me, and that I will always have people in my life willing to share in my joy, offer solace in my grief, or just make me a tape of songs they hope I’ll like. That’s what I think of when I listen to “Bad Reputation.” I remember what it is to be lonely but brave, and loved above all, and to have nothing to hold onto but the knowledge that all things change.

[See earlier installments here and, I guess, here.]

I was 14 years old in October 1996, two months into my freshman year of high school. My friends at the time were pretty much limited to the few relationships I’d forged at my church’s youth group. School was a much more lonely and daunting place, and I actually spent most of my freshman year eating lunch by myself on the courtyard benches outside the cafeteria. I’m not saying this to engender sympathy; I’m just trying to talk about how I experienced the world back then. I wasn’t happy with my situation, but I was familiar with it.

One of my closest friends — who’d become my best friend, a man I’m still in touch with today — was a kid I knew from the youth group. He went to a different high school, but we bonded over movies. We had similar tastes in film and a shared desire to explore the art form in ways that our other friends didn’t care to: My friend and I were probably the only teens in Texas to leave a Bible study early to catch American History X. He taught me about music, too, and he’s now someone I turn to regularly to discover artists I know I’ll love.

But all of that was later. In 1996, at 14, I was just a quiet, lonesome boy who didn’t know much about anything. My friend turned me onto a band called Fountains of Wayne when we were hanging out at his house one night, and the plaintive, witty power pop was the perfect soundtrack to insular evenings spent playing video games and talking about how much we didn’t understand the girls in our lives. We were listening to Fountains of Wayne’s self-titled debut, which came out that fall and received a modest amount of attention thanks to the fact that frontman Adam Schlesinger had penned the title song for Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do!, which hit theaters four days after the band’s album dropped. “Radiation Vibe” and “Sink to the Bottom” were released as singles, but all of the album’s bright, poppy explorations of heartache felt radio-ready. The one that stuck with me, though, was “Leave the Biker.”

“Leave the Biker” is an angular, jangly, downright perfect pop song about a boy or young man beating his head and heart against an invisible wall, wondering with all his might why the girl of his dreams was spending her time and energy on a slovenly thug who didn’t appreciate her (and, it should be noted, had been a real dick to the singer’s character). The singer talks about feeling trapped in his hometown, being unable to find a date, and wondering how he’ll ever make things change. These feelings are, to put it mildly, extremely resonant for lonesome high school freshmen, and the song stuck with me for its frankness and piercing heartbreak all wrapped up in a bubble-gum package. I learned the lyrics without ever trying to, and it became one of those songs everyone has that they sing in the shower or hum to themselves at odd moments. It just became my song.

I stayed with the band from then on. I liked 1999′s Utopia Parkway well enough, especially “It Must Be Summer” and “Red Dragon Tattoo,” but I adored 2003′s Welcome Interstate Managers. That was the album that introduced most of the rest of the country to the band: Its first single, “Stacy’s Mom,” was the band’s biggest smash to date, earning the video regular airplay and bringing the band an oddly timed Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, despite having formed almost a decade earlier and releasing two albums before this one. “Hey Julie,” another great song, earned some play thanks to placement in a few TV shows.

Welcome Interstate Managers stayed in a regular rotation for me for years — it became default road-trip music, for instance — but I never let myself get too far from their earlier songs or “Leave the Biker.” The band’s 15 minutes in the MTV spotlight ended, and they went back to being mine, in that way all groups do for fans who’ve been around before the fame hit and will be there long after it’s gone. Traffic and Weather, from 2007, had some great songs, and their latest, Sky Full of Holes, is wonderful.

When I met the woman who’d become my wife, I was living in California and she was living in Texas, which meant many, many phone calls. We discovered not only similar tastes in certain movies and music, but a shared history as singers, too: We both participated in the choir programs at our schools and universities, though her natural voice is stronger than mine. One night on the phone, she asked me to sing for her. I was scared for all the predictable reasons: Our relationship was still young, I was nervous, I wanted her to be impressed, I wanted her to like me, I didn’t want my voice to crack. She wasn’t auditioning me, but asking me to open up. So I did.

I sang “Leave the Biker.” At the time I told myself (and her) that it was the first and easiest song I could remember, and that it wasn’t too much of a strain in terms of range or melody, so I knew I’d be able to easily sing it over the phone. But the truth is it was also a song that had been with me for half my life at that point, and singing it meant saying This is who I am and where I’ve been. It wasn’t just a song I knew; it was something that had gotten me where I was, and a representation of the things about yourself that can only ever be expressed through music. I sang to her, softly, sitting on the edge of my bed in a crowded room in a Los Angeles apartment, reaching out to someone 1,600 miles away. It meant something to share it with her, the way it always does when you find someone so important that you’re willing to disclose the awkward ways you became who you are. That’s why there’s always going to be a divide between what people say is the best band and the one they claim as their favorite. Some stuff just stays with you that way.

[Working from the idea that all music is an autobiographical experience, I'd like to try and write about certain songs as they pertain to my life. No telling how often I'll get around to it.]

Weezer’s debut album — the first of three so far to be self-titled, but usually referred to as The Blue Album or, simply, Blue — was released in May 1994, the summer before my seventh-grade year and a month before I turned 12. The first single, “Undone (The Sweater Song),” was released in June, followed by “Buddy Holly” in September. That was followed by “Say It Ain’t So” in June 1995. All three songs charted well as Weezer became part of the pop consciousness, but “Buddy Holly” probably brought them the most recognition as their hardened pop — what I think of as “edgy shimmer” — took over the airwaves.

I knew none of this at the time. Or rather, I was aware that Weezer was a band that existed, and that they put out songs that kids far cooler than I was would sing in snatches around school. I saw friends listening to Discmans and holding the jewel case with its bright blue cover; I knew of the music video that featured what might be Fonzie; and that was about it. I grew up in a conservative religious household, which influenced what my parents would let me and my younger sister see or listen to (we didn’t watch MTV until I was probably 16, and even then it only happened because there was a glitch with the cable box and the parental controls became unlocked and my folks were too tired to fight the change), so we weren’t exactly steeped in popular rock.

But equally as influential was the fact that my parents just kind of stopped developing musically sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s. In other words, around the time they got married and then had me. My dad would later tell me of the Clapton and Zeppelin LPs he had in college, and my mother would grin while remembering the Simon and Garfunkel vinyls of her youth. But for the most part, they just didn’t care anymore about what was out there. They didn’t want what was newer, and they didn’t seem to be able to connect to the passion they used to have for what was older. In the car, my father listened to classic country, while my mom preferred the modern country station or, later, oldies. So while it’s tempting to try and equate my ignorance of certain pop songs to my parents’ views on religion, it’s more accurate to place those blank spots within a broader context: They weren’t against music, just indifferent to it.

Because of that, I had to educate myself on the music of my time in whatever ways I could, and I often came to things years late out of nothing more than a desire to explore and appreciate something I’d just barely missed. I heard Weezer on the radio and even snagged a few mp3s at college (the fall of my freshman year was the tail end of the Napster era), but I didn’t own Blue until I was probably 20. I was out shopping with a friend and saw it on sale for $10 or so, and I decided on a whim to buy it.

It is, as everyone who’s heard it knows, a magnificent pop record, full of snappy hooks, dreamy choruses, and enough angst to fuel a million bad mix tapes. It’s an album I can listen to regardless of mood, location, or time of day; it just fits everywhere. Getting to know the album as a whole gave me renewed appreciation for the singles, too. No longer were those songs dispatches from a place I’d never seen. They were now a part of my young adult experience, serving as a soundtrack to my present even as they connected me in new ways to my past.

I lived in Los Angeles for five years after I graduated college, and the joy and pain of that time did more to shape me than anything else ever has. I discovered that Blue fit my awkward young adulthood like a tear-stained glove: “Surf Wax America” for driving down the PCH, “Undone” for the commute home after a night out with friends, “In the Garage” when I was feeling insecure, “Say It Ain’t So” when I needed to howl in the car. The songs became touchstones in my life, tying me to a time and place. I get just as nostalgic when I hear that record as I’d imagine my peers do, but I’m nostalgic for an entirely different time of our lives. They remember pubescent anger and a world viewed through fog; I remember my first job, my first love, my first heartbreak, my first apartment. The life I carved out of rock. The places I shouldn’t have gone. The things I’m glad I did. And the people that went with me.

Moving across the country to a place where no one knows you just to try your hand at a fate that might well destroy you is a challenge like no other. Most people do it in their 20s because that’s when they’re strong enough to take it. I was lucky during my time in California to make some truly great friends and find a fantastic roommate, all of whom made it a bit easier to survive the tough times that no one ever sees coming.

My roommate and I would throw an annual “Burgers, Beer, and Rock Band Bash” in the summer, opening up our apartment to friends all day. We cooked on the grill, swam in the pool, drank more than was wise, and played Rock Band on my roommate’s Xbox 360. They were wonderful days, easy ones, when we all took a break from figuring out adulthood. One year, I was noodling on the plastic guitar with a few others filling out the band when we played — what else? — “Buddy Holly.” It was the ideal song for the day, the kind of easy rocker that makes everyone sing along. I was drunk enough to be happily loose on the guitar, swaggering around and having fun with friends. I’d played the song before on the game but something about it just felt better that night. It was, for reasons I can’t figure out and wouldn’t want to bother trying to, exactly what I needed to hear. As we came to the solo, I slid into the groove without missing a note, feeling the fake/real music moving through me, inebriated enough to be happy I was home but sober enough to be thankful for the moment, surrounded by a family I’d found. I didn’t even think about those final eight notes when only the guitar played, though they’d tripped me up before. I just went into them, right as a friend turned and pointed at me to underscore the absurdity of pretending to be a band and the weird bliss of almost being them, and I nailed every note, and we all came back in together and sang our youth to the stars, I was a rock star, I was Buddy Holly, I was home.

My best friend got me into The Refreshments in high school. This was right before it became impossibly easy to learn about and acquire new music, and getting a new album meant actually, physically buying one. When I realized the band had a second (and final) record, I felt as if I’d made some discovery born of my own hard work.

The same thing happened to the band that happens to so many others: They just didn’t spark, and they broke up. Guitarist and lead vocalist Roger Clyne took drummer P.H. Naffah and formed a new group, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, that delved deeper into the country-rock sound that The Refreshments had flirted with on a few songs.
That best friend was the one who brought me to Clyne’s new music. He got us tickets to see the group play at a bar in San Antonio on a weeknight, maybe a Wednesday, which meant leaving our college town of Abilene and barreling four hours through the Texas desert to make it in time for doors and the opener*. That trip was the first time I’d actually heard Clyne’s new project, and my friend played the Peacemakers’ first and then only album, Honky Tonk Union, over and over on the drive to San Antonio so I’d be familiar with the songs when I heard them live that night.

(*The opening act turned out to be Slobberbone. It’s probably the only show I’ve ever been to where I actually enjoyed the opening act as much as the headliner, and I got into Slobberbone’s music then, too. That band has since broken up and reconstituted itself as The Drams.)

The show was one of the best I’ve ever been to. I’ve seen better bands, sure, and I’ve been to better venues. But the band’s low profile meant the turnout was pretty moderate, and my friend and I were able to stand closer to the stage than I ever could have dreamed. The show also resonated in a special way because the band felt like it was ours. That’s a horrible cliche, and something people say about every band they like regardless of its hits or pop culture influence, but it felt true then and still holds today. This was the band we’d listened to in high school that no one else seemed to know or care about. These were the songs — earnest, rocking, lyrically flawed — that played in my younger life and would continue to spin for years. Clyne’s words have never quite lived up to the standard he holds for himself, and the mix of fun wordplay and genuine angst often buts against some truly heinous puns and rhythms, but that fuzzy attempt to get the words right just made the songs that much more appropriate for me. I was young, and I didn’t even know what I didn’t know yet except that it was often all I could do just to try to get the words out in rough shape. Clyne was rough, but so was I.

After the show, my friend and I were keyed up and blissed out on rock and youth. We went by my parents’ house, though they didn’t even know I was in town. My friend and I got to their house around midnight, and I called them from the living room to prove I was actually there. They were nonplussed but accommodating. We left and went to my friend’s parents’ place to spend the night before heading back to college. The round trip didn’t take 30 hours.

My friend and I stayed tuned into Clyne for a while, but our interest eventually waned. We saw him play the Viper Room when I moved to Los Angeles after graduation, and we journeyed from Tucson to Puerto Penasco, Mexico, for one of his epic-length biannual beach shows. (After four hours of music, I gave up and went back to the hotel, passing out half-drunk watching some disturbing Mexican game show featuring a man in a monkey suit.) Clyne’s successive albums devolved in tone, style, and quality; he began his new band with an ear for rocking alt-country, but he morphed into a latter-day Jimmy Buffett enamored of songs about margaritas and beach parties. He changed, and we did, and that was it.

Hearing those early Clyne songs now is almost surreal. They were tied so tightly to a specific time in my life, but more than that, to a specific stage in my life. I was alone and lonely, drunk and worried, unsure of myself and unaware of the life-changing mistakes I would soon make. In other words, I was in my early 20s. To hear songs of barroom romance and cowboy-lite wanderings now is to be transported into the skin of a different man. I wonder if this is the way it is for everyone. You never love any music like the stuff you did when you were young — my sister very astutely observed that whatever you were listening to when you learned to drive will forever be a part of you — and it’s interesting that what that actually means is that you never click with anything else the way you did with the stuff you heard when you were just learning to walk on your own in this world. The soundtrack of your disappointments will always stick with you, long after the failures have faded. I can still touch the feelings I had the first time I heard these songs, and I recoil from them as if shocked. Some music grows with us, some of it’s timeless, and some of it will always and ever take us back.

So every now and then I’ll put on Honky Tonk Union. I’ve got a few of Clyne’s later records, but listening to them is a different experience. They sound like remnants of my past, dusty but harmless. Honky Tonk Union, though; that one came from my own hand. I want to tell that kid to hang in there, but I know he wouldn’t listen, just grin and turn up the volume.